


never cold (never cold)

by mornen



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Burning, Complicated Relationships, Experimental Style, Family, Fire, Fragmented Writing, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Horror, Mental Health Issues, Unreliable Narrator, Wax, Young Parents, fragments, horror esque, scratching self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:00:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22822162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mornen/pseuds/mornen
Summary: Fëanáro doesn’t visit often. Sometimes he cries on the floor like he’s dying. He puts his hands on his stomach, saying, ‘She gave me too much! She gave me too much! Let it out! Let it out!’Findis runs, and Fëanáro twists, and he screams, and the ceiling could fall.Fëanáro stiffens and becomes suddenly still, and he says, ‘I thought you would do better,’ much too quickly.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 47





	1. matches

Fëanáro in scarlet with black hair down to his waist and grey eyes like smoke and lips quivering, tears down his face saying, ‘I cannot forgive you.’

Fëanáro in scarlet standing with his hands down by his sides and arms wrapped in gold and gems, hair strewn with diamonds, lips painted red, eyes lined with black, saying, ‘Is this enough?’

Fëanáro on his knees on the floor, cheeks flushed, fingers spread and bare, eyes wild and searching, saying, ‘Is this enough?’

Fëanáro wrapped in black silk, bound at the waist, hair over his face so tangled it has become lace, palms bloody, eyes melted, breath jagged, saying, ‘I cannot forgive you.’

Fëanáro in white, caught blue in the shadows. Fëanáro in white with wet lips. Fëanáro in white, hand caught in his hair, skin burning.

Fëanáro in grey, kneeling by the fire, dropping tears on the ash. Fëanáro in grey, sunk in the river, hands facing the sky. Fëanáro in grey, cheeks flushed, shirt torn, with a bruised eye.

Fëanáro in green, hair bound, red wax on his white arm.

Fëanáro saying, ‘Please, don’t look at me.’

*

Fëanáro looks away from cradle. Finwë cannot read his eyes.

Fëanáro hugs one leg to his chest. He pushes the cradle with his other foot. His feet, his legs are bare. He is wrapped in beige linen. His fingers dance along his thigh. He pushes the cradle with his big toe. He does not look at the baby.

He’s young, but he’s married. He isn’t even fully grown. His wife is Nerdanel. She is talking to Indis.

Fëanáro chews on his hair. He sucks on his lip and rolls his head in a circle. He watches Finwë. He tilts his head back. He blows on his fingers. He lets Finwë take his arms and pull him onto his lap. He lifts his leg to his chest again.

Finwë takes his hand and holds it to his lips. He presses a firm kiss to it.

‘Findis,’ Fëanáro says, feeling out the sounds. He tilts his head back.

Finwë touches his neck. ‘Your sister.’

Fëanáro says, ‘I only have you.’

Everything is still.

*

Fëanáro doesn’t visit often. Sometimes he cries on the floor like he’s dying. He puts his hands on his stomach, saying, ‘She gave me too much! She gave me too much! Let it out! Let it out!’

Findis runs, and Fëanáro twists, and he screams, and the ceiling could fall.

Fëanáro stiffens and becomes suddenly still, and he says, ‘I thought you would do better,’ much too quickly.

Then he falls, head back, neck showing, and he claws from his knee to his hip, from his navel to his chin, and only Finwë can stop him, lying on him, holding his hands over his head.

Saying, ‘Fëanáro, Fëanáro, Fëanáro.’

*

Fëanáro lies on the bed and he watches Findis, and he says, ‘Why are you laughing?’

Nerdanel lies beside him, and she says, ‘Stop it,’ and he is quiet.

He looks at Finwë and Finwë touches his arm, and he smiles, but his eyes are dead.

*

Fëanáro standing in the garden with fire on his fingers that disappears when Finwë looks at him. He holds up his hand, and it is empty.

Finwë turns away and Fëanáro screams, and his hand is burned by the time Finwë reaches him.

*

Fëanáro in shadows deeper than his sorrow. He slides into Aulë’s arms, and he stands up again. He falls so easily. Aulë catches him. Aulë straightens him.

*

Fëanáro wrapped in black silk. Fëanáro wrapped in black silk, bound at the waist.

‘You’re too close to the fire,’ Finwë says. (Finwë always says.)

*

Fëanáro with his finger in his mouth tracing his teeth. Fëanáro with soft fingers. Fëanáro with grey eyes.

*

Fëanáro sliding on the snow with bare feet. (Fëanáro saying I’m never cold, Father.)

*

Fëanáro holds Ñolofinwë’s hand after dinner. They sit close to the fire. Fëanáro strokes his brother’s hair and drops round stones into his hand.

(Fëanáro in blue.)

Nerdanel watches him for a moment, and she frowns. Fëanáro slips his fingers through Ñolofinwë’s hair.

‘Ñolo, Ñolo,’ he whispers.

Ñolofinwë looks up at him.

‘Say that you love me.’

‘I love you.’


	2. spark

Fëanáro stands and his skin is bruised green along his thighs.

‘Please don’t say you meant it,’ he says as Finwë undresses. (He stays too long in their bedroom.) ‘Please, I didn’t mean to be a thief.’

Fëanáro holds three rings on a silver chain, and the chain is wrapped around his hand, making rings along his fingers. The rings swing and glint in the mingling light. Fëanáro holds them out.

‘For you.’

Finwë takes them. He unwraps the chain from Fëanáro’s fingers. The chain leaves red marks.

‘Why do you keep hurting yourself?’ Finwë asks.

Fëanáro sucks on a finger. His lashes cast shadows on his eyes.

‘I didn’t mean it,’ he says. ‘I wanted to feel it again.’

‘Feel what again?’

Fëanáro looks at Indis and does not answer. His bare feet shift on the marble floor.

Fëanáro dressed in a white shirt without sleeves that stops at his hips. Fëanáro dressed in white shorts not much longer. He still dresses like a child. (Is not yet grown.)

‘It hurt when she died,’ Fëanáro says. ‘Did you know it hurt?’

‘Yes,’ Finwë says. ‘Of course it hurt.’

‘No, it hurt more. Like my soul was torn in two. I don’t think I’ll ever be whole.’ His voice is so fast.

‘It hurt me too,’ Finwë says.

Fëanáro watches Indis.

‘Like,’ he says, ‘you’ll never be whole again?’

‘I’m whole,’ Finwë answers.

‘Then it hurt me more.’

*

‘Are you scared of me?’ Fëanáro asks his reflection. His hair flies around his head, and his eyes flash. He holds his hand to the glass. He waits. ‘See I thought I wanted an answer,’ he says.

Nerdanel stands, wrapped in green velvet.

‘But I don’t.’

‘It’s just a reflection,’ Nerdanel says. ‘You aren’t your mother, Fëanáro.’

Fëanáro slides his finger along his lips.

‘But I look like her. But I stole too much of her fëa.’

‘You aren’t your mother.’

Fëanáro bleeds from a split lip that wasn’t split a second before.

‘I guess I never will be.’

*

Findis runs, hair flying golden. It spins in curls around her moon-face. (There is no moon. Finwë will never see a moon. Is this a tragedy? Will someone recount it in a grassy field in the night long years later and cry?)

Findis has golden brown skin that shines radiant. She has dark eyes that search Fëanáro’s face, searching for something he keeps behind closed lips. She looks like her mother. Fëanáro ties emeralds into her hair.

‘A present.’

Ñolofinwë runs, hair black and bound. Wisps of hair fall free from his braid and he brushes them aside impatiently. He has brown skin that glows in the light of the candles. He pinches them out with his fingers. His eyes are as dark blue as the deepest parts of the sea. He hides secrets in them and laughs when Fëanáro asks what they are. He looks like their father.

Fëanáro holds Ñolofinwë’s hands to his lips. He kisses them.

No one is there. Who can say what happened?

*

Fëanáro has hair to his waist. He cuts it with a knife in the light of Telperion, and it falls like ash to the floor. He bathes in the cold sea to wash away the hair that cuts at his neck and shoulders.

The cold does not touch him.

He leans back in the water and lets it take him. He floats on the waves, limbs outstretched. His skin gleams silver in the light. He looks like his mother.

(He only looks like his mother.)

He goes inside naked still and sits beside his child’s cradle. His child lies wrapped in white, and his hair is red against the sheet. Fëanáro rocks the cradle. He kisses the child.

Third. Third. Third.

Fëanáro touches his child’s red hair. He does not know who he looks like.

*

Fëanáro holds his child in the dining hall. The child sleeps with grey eyes open.

‘He is so beautiful,’ Finwë says.

‘Nelyafinwë,’ Fëanáro answers. His lips tremble, but his voice does not falter.

(He is not yet grown.)

Finwë takes the child. He cradles him in his arms. Fëanáro has tied diamonds into the baby’s hair.

Finwë unties them later.


	3. ash

Fëanáro sucks on his knuckles. He has burns. He always has burns, though he says that nothing can hurt him. That might be a lie. Sometimes he lies, or whispers half truths in the dark, eyes the only light in the room. (She gave him too much.)

‘I don’t want you to hurt me,’ Fëanáro says when Finwë touches his fingers. He has a diamond clasped around his neck more brilliant than anything that Finwë has seen. He says he isn’t done.

‘I can do better,’ Fëanáro says so fast he is breathless. ‘I have to.’ He wraps bandages around his fingers and drops jewels in handfuls onto the table.

‘Does this make up for it?’ he asks with each new gem, light caught in them, breaking out from between his fingers. ‘Can you forgive me now?’

*

He places the Silmarils on the kitchen table next to the flour where Indis and Nerdanel knead bread.

‘I’m sorry I killed her,’ he says, but only in Finwë’s mind. He is grown now and dressed in red the colour of his wife’s hair. He is grown, but he is still small like Míriel was small, and he has her pointed features and quicksilver eyes.

‘You didn’t kill her,’ Finwë says, out loud, far too loud for the hush that has fallen over the kitchen.

Fëanáro stares at the Silmarils. His mouth raises one one side, but he does not smile. He does not let Finwë touch him.

‘They are beautiful,’ Findis says, and it’s flat, because they are beautiful but they are more than beautiful and still not enough.

Fëanáro inclines his head. He sinks onto the bench by the table and takes a slice of mango between his burnt fingers. He lifts it, as if he will eat it, but it falls from his fingers, and he falls from the bench, in a faint on the floor.

It is Indis who reaches him first and lifts him into her arms.

He sleeps for long days. Perhaps he put too much of himself into the jewels. Finwë washes the flour from them and puts them in the room beside Fëanáro’s bed. He sits beside him as he sleeps.

This part is too familiar.

‘Will I lose everyone I love?’ he asks the Silmarils when everyone else is asleep, and they are the only light in the room, too beautiful to look away from, too strange to love.

*

Fëanáro wakes one morning. He touches the Silmarils first and then Nerdanel’s face. She sleeps beside him.

‘I thought,’ she says when she sees that he is awake.

Fëanáro stands. There are no burns on his arms. He slides his unmarked fingers along the Silmarils. The light is pure. His hand quivers.

He is thinking of skip rope and forget-me-nots.

‘How long have I slept?’ he asks. ‘Did I die?’ he asks next.

‘A year. And no,’ she answers.

‘How are the children?’

Nerdanel stands.

‘You should see the children.’

Fëanáro opens the curtains. The light is mingling. He sways, and he wants to sleep again, but he cannot. Still, he is tired. He is tired in a way that he does not know how to wake from. He feels that it may be his fault.

There is blood in his mouth where before there was none. He swallows it down. When he turns to the room, he sees himself in the mirror. His face is hollow, and his lips red on a white face. His hair is long, and his eyes are still too bright, quicksilver, shadowed.

He brushes the blood from his lips with his thumb and wipes it on his leg.

‘Can you keep a promise?’ he asks.

Nerdanel stands in grey. Her hair is loose around her.

‘What promise?’ she asks, she answers.

Fëanáro shakes his head. His feet are bare on the marble. It is cold. He is cold. He lifts his hand, and no flames spark around it.

‘I think,’ he says. ‘I made a mistake.’

‘In what?’ she says.

He closes his teeth tight so that they do not rattle together. He clenches his hands so that his fingers won’t shake.

He says, ‘I have missed the children.’

**Author's Note:**

> I had a request to write about Fëanor and Fingolfin and I wanted to write flashes of scenes


End file.
